Larian Studio continues to improve Baldur’s Gate 3 with a brand new update that includes more accessibility features! Patch 5 is another substantial update that’s chock-full of goodies and just in time for the holiday season. This patch introduces a major story add-on with an Epilogue taking place six months after the events of Act 3. Using the choices players made, it creates a unique ending on each playthrough, adding over 3500 new lines of dialogue. Patch 5 also brings with it two new difficulty modes, improved inventory, and even more accessibility.
Honour Mode and Custom Mode
Honour Mode makes the game much more challenging, far surpassing even the Tactician Mode in difficulty. Choosing Honour Mode, overall difficulty of combat is increased and boss fights have brand new abilities making encounters even tougher. It also comes with a permadeath feature, which prevents players from reloading their saves if all party members die.
On the other hand, Custom Mode let’s players completely customize their gameplay experience. This mode offers options to adjust character power-scaling, enemy aggression and loot. It’s also possible to adjust the amount of enemies that appear in certain battles. So for example, I could choose to lower enemy rate and increase enemy aggression if I wanted.
It also allows players to avoid HP reaching 0 during combat, disable enemy critical hits, and have Short Rests fully heal. There’s even an option to preview dialog check difficulty. This feature lets players know how hard an Ability or Skill Check is before selecting a dialogue option. Adding more ways to prepare for combat like that, will surely benefit a lot of disabled players. As I wasn’t able to adjust these settings for my playthrough, players may need to start a new game to access Custom Mode.
Inventory and Additional Accessibility
Patch 5 makes big changes to the inventory system of Baldur’s Gate 3. Many players expressed that this system needed improvement. Now players can manage the inventory of any companion in camp, without having to recruit them first. They also do not need to be in the active party. All of it has been streamlined to one single UI, located under the character icons.
After deep diving into the expanded patch notes, I saw a few more features added to the game. Players are now able to sell and trade items in containers when trading. Sorting and grouping of items in containers is improved as well. On top of the general optimization improvements and bug fixes, there is also a profanity filter for custom map markers. And an option to adjust controller stick sensitivity is available as well.
Baldur’s Gate 3 has a lot to offer and is becoming more and more accessible with each new update. It’s wonderful to see Larian Studios deliver on features players have asked for, while allowing support for different play styles. Although it doesn’t appear there are plans to release more narrative content, the studio promises to provide updates well into next year. You can check out all of the new features in the patch notes for Baldur’s Gate Patch 5.
